marketing practices

" Akanksha Goel, newly appointed Editor-in-Chief of Stuff Singapore -- a gadgets and technology lifestyle publication launched in the UK five years ago -- is a final-year marketing and corporate communication student at Singapore Management University. Goel, who also helped organise Asia's first PodCamp held at the university recently, talked to [email protected] about how social media compels us to rethink culture, and why companies should take advantage of these new channels to grow their businesses."

Business development idea - the growing market for business social networking software and community solutions as a new communications tool. That's right. Email is dying and knowledge workers really want to work together - collaborate - to get their work done.

"To big-name marketers, the teeming mosh pits of social networking sites look like dangerous places for their precious brands. MySpace: Isn’t that full of dirty old men picking up teenage girls? Facebook: That’s where college students post pictures of bawdy frat parties. And YouTube: Pirated videos — and people making fun of our commercials."

Creating Social Network Sites and Community Driven ones for E-comm.

Lately, we've been working with retailers on setting up community based sites, social networks, to help them engage customers. Although, the idea is not really new, think Amazon, the user marketing approach breaks new ground. What's interesting here is that the customers will be writing the product descriptions. But what's really cool is that customers, in some cases, will help set pricing. So, we'll have dynamic pricing on some products/services.

Inside organizations, we have the longtail of ideas and information that needs to be connected to people, places, and things. The longtail, or maybe the edge, is where some of the best ideas originate to improve performance. I haven't read a book in some time but Chris's new book about the longtail will certainly be one that motivates me enough to buy it and read it.

Social network software (Ideascape) pushes customer feedbabck further than was possible with traditional focus groups and surveys. Users submit product development ideas into an ongoing contest for approval by their peers. Ideas rated highly by other users bubble up to the top of the list, providing submitters with notoriety as well as reward incentives. Corporate marketers can take the highest-potential ideas into their own product development process.